I love useful useless pieces of plastic. RooKaps are just such micro-wonders that come in a rainbow of colors. They’re just replacement caps for USB drives, but the small city of headless drives I have wandering around my desk make them oddly compelling. Not so compelling is the price, though, with clear ones running $16 for 12, and the coloured ones hitting $16.29 for ten. I mean, they’re little pieces of plastic, they’re not worth a whole dollar each. Oh, and I’m not sure who “asked” for the $3.99 ones with matching lanyards, but I’m pretty sure they fail at life. [RooKaps via Everything USB]
Gotta love Newegg. Asus’s Eee notebook just went onsale there yesterday, and an unbox/grope video as well as a lengthy shot-by-shot dissection are already up. Despite seeing stock photos of people using it, the thing still seems almost unexpectedly and impressively pint-sized. Autopsy shot is this way, for the truly geeky.
Buried in the pile of bad news that was Blockbuster’s Q3 earnings report (losses more than tripled vs. last year to $35 million) was the quote from CEO Jim Keyes that “the company will no longer be narrowly focused on its online subscriber count but instead will concentrate on the growth of, and report on, its total membership.” In other words, Total Access=total fail.
Besides basically handing the online rental space over to Netflix, it leaves it the sole powerhouse movie rental company to remain profitable—Movie Gallery, the no. 2 B&M chain, is bankrupt—and therefore the undisputed heavyweight champion of the rental world. Make no mistake about it, folks, things are looking grim for the corner rental store.
It’s not like Blockbuster was totally unaware of this. Moving into new distribution channels is increasingly looking like the only way to survive the video wars—hopefully Netflix doesn’t stop following through on their bolder, more intuitive ideas, lest we write about it sinking with the physical media rental market altogether in several years. [Forbes via Consumerist, Flickr]
Okay, maybe the sky is falling for Sprint. According to the WSJ, Sprint’s board is looking at several hard choices regarding their risk-laden WiMax venture, one of which is to spin off the WiMax unit to merge with frenemy Clearwire, forming an entirely new public company. For investors, this might be a sweet spot because it’d ease WiMax doubters‘ minds (and wallets) while the more daring money-flingers can throw capital at it to their hearts’ content.
Other possibilities include enticing new investors to pump more cash into their WiMax division, buying Clearwire or locking up their sort-of deal from earlier this summer. But, anything involving fireworks will have to wait until a new, permanent CEO jumps into the mix, which could take a while. [WSJ]
We’ve added a few more details to the Eee PC Australian news post from yesterday. Bounce back to take a look. Not much more yet, but maybe a little more to get the saliva glands working overtime.
PC World readers, you’re in for a shock. The print edition of the local edition magazine is about to call it a day. Interestingly, they’ve said they’re not about to kick out all their editorial staff for a very Scroogey Christmas, but will be keeping them on to drive their new focus on a big, sexy web edition.
We’ve lost a few small mags over recent years, but something on the scale of PC World is a pretty big tower to see fall. That said, there are an awful lot of computer mags in Australia, so could all the big ones really survive much longer?
I know some of the team. We see each other around at press events. So we send them all our best wishes as colleagues… followed by a big “Mwa, haha, bring it on! We will crush your puny online efforts!” And then we remember we’re a blog, and we share the link love to anyone who deserves it. C’mon, PC World. Let’s see you earn our online love!
The final print edition will run in January. [PC World Australia]
Dan Lyons, AKA Fake Steve Jobs is doing a reading of his new book, Options, in the valley. We’re at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park—the most important book reading, being so close to the mothership. I recognise an Apple employee in the crowd. Woz is here, and when I approached him to say hello, he moved aside, modestly, as if I was looking for a book behind him and he was in the way. No. “Woz,” I said, ” I’m a big fan of your work.” He smiled, but I could tell he was already prepping to introduce Lyons, minutes away from being on stage. It’s starting, and OMG…Woz just introduced FSJ and awarded him an official Apple black mock turtleneck…and Owen Thomas from Valleywag, AKA Mr. Bigglesworth is sitting front row, ready to taunt him. Fiction just slammed into reality and my mind just asploded. UPDATED
With all of the emphasis on saving energy and eco-friendliness these days, hand-crank technology has seen increased use in devices ranging from phone chargers to the OLPC. If the Freeplay Foundation’s LifeLight Project has its way, this old school technology may soon be used to illuminate the homes of Africa’s poor. According to estimates, as many as 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to electricity, resorting instead to kerosene lamps, battery powered lights, and wood fires to generate light. Prototypes are now being developed for future testing in Kenya, and designs have been drawn up for a base unit that would be used to recharge multiple detachable lights that can be distributed around the home. [BBC News]
China’s TechFaith Wireless Communication Company has developed what they are calling the “World’s first WCDMA/GSM dual mode phone.” The “Twins” phone, as it has been dubbed, allows users the option of loading one WCDMA card and one GSM or loading dual GSM SIM cards. That means it would no longer be necessary to switch out SIM cards or carry around two phones for calls on both business and personal lines.
Other features include: a 2.0 megapixel camera, 2.8″ touch sensitive TFT-LCD display, 256MB/64MB ROM memory, MP3 and MPEG4 player, WCDMA modem, Bluetooth, and video call capabilities. Two models will be available the “Dragonfly” and “OMAP’ with the latter having a faster CPU and tri-band network support instead of quad-band. Naturally, no pricing information has been released, which is just as well seeing as how this product is unlikely to make its way to the states anytime soon. Bummer. [TechFaith via TFOT]
newVideoPlayer("p2_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Since the YP-P2 is Samsung’s attempt to take on the iPod touch, we thought we’d show you a touching video—one that Jennifer and I shot in a crowded Starbucks today—depicting its (mostly) touch-friendly interface. [Samsung]
